3D Christmas decoration

Now that Christmas season is approaching, we are going to build something magnificent for the cozy time, which is easy to build and has almost no material costs.

And here´s how it works:

Material

Tools

2 Wood batten

Cordless drill

Glue

Hot-melt pistol

Branches

Mitre saw / Jigsaw

Plywood

Plexiglas white (10 * 10 cm)

Small chain of lights

Costs about 15 €

Step 1: Building the frame

First, we cut the ends of the wood batten in a 45 degree because we want to build a frame. My measurements are 80 * 60 cm, that means 2 x 80 cm and 2 x 60 cm.

But these numbers can be set individually after your preferences.

Then we glue the cut battens together.

I paint the corners with glue and clamp them with a frame tensioner.

Alternatively, you can staple them together with a tacker or simply screw them together.

Step 2: Preparing the plywood and attaching the template

While the frame is drying, I cut out the Christmas figures with a scroll saw.

(The Christmas templates are available at Pinterest or Google Image Search. Simply enter "Christmas Templates" or "Christmas Scroll Saw Template" to get a large selection.)

For this, I first paste the plywood board with a few strips of paper tape. Then I can temporarily fix the template with spray adhesive on the taped plywood panel.

Because now the template can be easily removed later without long sanding. I let the glue dry for about 10 minutes before we start sawing out the stencil.

Step 3: Building the moon

In the meantime, we can draw the moon, which will later decorate my upper frame corner. For this I take a piece of Plexiglas and put an adhesive roll on it and use it as a template for my moon. I chose a half-moon by the way. Now we can saw the drawing out with a jigsaw, or you can use the Einhell band saw like I do.

Step 4: Sawing out the figures

Now we saw out the templates that we have previously taped to the plywood boards (reindeer, Santa Claus, stars, owl ...). First, we drill a hole in the wood near the template line with a 4-6 mm drill and then saw out the figure with the scroll saw.

Now we remove the glued template by simply peeling it off and sanding it off a bit.

Step 5: Attaching the branches

Next I cut branches off the tree from my garden and put them in front of the heater for a few days to dry them.

These I have now placed on my frame and saw them almost fittingly.

I left the branches about 5 mm longer, so they can easily be wedged.

Depending on your taste you can use many or a few branches.

Step 6: Attaching the figures on the frame

In the penultimate step, we take our cut-out figures and our frame and drill a small hole in each object with a 4 mm drill bit where they should later be connected.

Then we take a small nail, put it in the pre-drilled hole on the frame, pinch off the head of the nail and now we can put our figures on the protruding nails. The nail now connects frame and our Christmas figures with each other. The advantage of this method is that the figures can be changed seasonally, as they were only plugged in and not glued or drilled.

Behind our cut-out moon, I stick a small, yellow, rectangular sheet so that it later appears a little yellowish. To bring out the moon even better, I spray its front side only a little bit with black spray colour on.

With a hot glue gun, we now glue the moon in one of the two upper corners.

Step 7: The finish

If you want, you can decorate the whole object with some lights.

I bought a chain of lights for this purpose. To cleverly fix these in my construction, I cut a small half-round wooden plate in the shape of the moon and screw it to the frame behind the moon. On the back of this plate, I then half-drilled several screws and wrapped my fairy lights around them. So that the fairy lights can´t drop off, I also stretched small rubber bands over the screws.

In every star I have drilled a small hole to put a light of the chain later trough each one.

Now to the battery box.

I simply placed the battery box between three screws on the back of the frame. I drilled two screws into the frame, but only so deep that the battery box fits well on it. With another screw, the battery box is now clamped from above. We also stretch a rubber band over the three screws in order to fix the battery box, but to be able to remove it easily in case.

Last but not least we glue the stars and the owl with our hot glue gun on our object.

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